Letters of love & longingness to Lahore, from India

Jupinderjit Singh

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 4

At a time when Indo-Pak relations are at one of the lowest ebbs, a unique movement for friendship has begun ahead of the anniversary of the Partition, with a number of Punjabis writing letters, addressed to the Lahore post office, with a message of love and peace.

Titled “Daak: to Lahore with love”, the movement is an initiative of a Chandigarh-based poet and teacher, Amy Singh, who has been writing such letters for the past three years. It picked up pace in the past three days, when she posted video messages on social media exhorting people to be extremists of love rather than violence.

Amy said she has no direct connection with anyone in Pakistan but she wanted to express her feelings and pain of separated states, so she decided to send letters to General Post Office, Lahore.

Sadly, none of the letters drew any response. But the movement suddenly picked up pace when she posted the letters on Internet with a message asking others to emulate. Within a short time, she has got messages from Pakistan with people saying they will retrieve the letters from the post office and reply.

Many people quickly followed the initiative and wrote letters to Lahore and posted those on Internet. Not just that, PKR Jain Senior Secondary School, Ambala, led by its principal Uma Sharma, has pledged sending letters by its 2,000 students. A youth, Bikram, from Tohana town penned a letter to the Lahore post office and sent her a copy. “Interestingly, so many youngsters, who had no immediate experience of what Lahore was and what the pain of Partition felt like, have wrote letters or sent messages appreciating the movement,” she said.

She too had no connection with Lahore, but had heard many stories about the Pakistani city, which defined Punjabi culture. “My grandfather, who died during my early childhood, used to tell me about a vibrant life, the love and romanticism of Lahore. I have never been there. I felt for the city three years ago, when a popular eatery changed a food park’s name from Lahore Chowk to some other city’s name. I felt for Lahore, and wrote my first letter.”

She doesn’t known if anyone was reading her letter, “I wrote as per my mood and in the language I felt. I expected some reply but none came. Thanks to social media, there is a flood of response now. I hope this bloodshed ends.”